Lesbians do not exist in mainstream Australian cinema. Apart from a brief sequence representing youthful lesbian desire in 'The Getting of Wisdom (1977)' and the undercurrent of adolescent homoeroticism in 'Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)' Australian cinema has remained mute - perhaps dumbstruck might be a more appropriate term - in relation to the issue of desire between women.
In the incredible shrinking space between 1984 and 2001 the distinction between social-issue documentary and surreal fiction is collapsing - almost as fast as Australian capitalism or Soviet communism.
In the decades prior to the expansion of art-house cinemas and television programming, 'independent distribution and exhibition' denoted a more specific activity than it does in the 1990s.
Blotting paper, alchemy or potent cocktail. When radical European film-makers in the 1950s with the Nagra sound recorder and noiseless, hand held camera, the Eclair, launched what they called Cinema Verite, they thought they had discovered a way to film truth on the move.
Surely one of the powers of cinema is the aesthetic redemption of everyday reality, a poetics in motion that can distill and energise mundane objects, be they tiles on a kitchen wall, the fluorescent facade of an airport terminal, a luminously white T-shirt being twisted and tugged or the compact shapeliness of Y-fronts on a young body emerging from bed.
Independent cinema may have been diverse in form, but its practitioners had in common a position of difference and marginality, working outside the mainstream and in opposition to it.
In matters of technology, as in matters of sex, it is easy to assume one's own preferences are universal and normal, and to regard other's tastes as somehow debased or improper.
Tracey Moffatt offers her personal insights on the making of 'Bedevil' made in 1992 with Film Finance Corporation Trust funds. Due for release in 1993.
To begin this discussion of Ross Gibson's new film 'Wild' it may be useful to trace its origins to his 1984 film 'Camera Natura'. The earlier film employed an essay mode to deconstruct the discourses around non-Aboriginal imaging of the landscape.
Over 12 days in November 1992, the Melbourne based Modern Image Makers Association (MIMA) held the third Experimenta presenting nearly 200 works of film, video, installation and performance. It included work from Germany, Japan, England and the USA, thus providing an opportunity to assess the current state of 'avant garde' practice and discourse.